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This set of 5 plastic texture tools work wonderfully with heavy bodied acrylic paints, texture paste, modeling paste, and gel mediums. Just lay down your medium and drag the texture tool through it to get interesting textures. This set includes 4 different textures and one flat tool that can be used in a wissping motion to create frosting like effects or even used as a palette knife for stencils.

Each texture tool has a stencil in the center that coordinates with the texture that it creates. Made of .040″ thick flexible plastic. Your set will come with a blue liner that can be removed before use. This blue liner protects the plastic from scratches and burn marks from the laser cutting process.

These texture tools have a comfortable ergonomic feel. The texture coverage width is 2-13/16″.

Clean immediately after use with soap and water or a baby wipe. Chemical Resistant. Keep away from extreme heat.

Have you seen the Distress Marker Spritzer that Tim Holtz came out with?!

Here’s a video below:

It’s basically a re-release of an old tool that has been around in crafting for a while. It makes sense to re-release it being that stencils are so “in” right now. I think it is so awesome! You can create an airbrush effect with ANY of your markers! I thought they were so cool that I had to get one for myself and carry them in my store 🙂 . MSRP is $15.00 , but I have them at 10% off right now, so they are $13.50 for a new release item. I also got many other new CHA 2014 Ranger products listed at my eBay store. Check it out here, http://stores.ebay.com/Intoxicating-Arts . Just click on the category you want on the left side of the screen.

I recently purchased the McGill Paper Blossoms tool set at the Scrapbook Convention I went to. Last night I tried out the tools with some paper flowers I die cut using my Donna Salazar Rose Creations Die by Spellbinders . Click the highlited link to find the die template set at my store. I also have the Donna Salazar video in the item description. After I made these flowers I went on YouTube and found a video by Donna Salazar herself showing a couple of ways you can use her die. I’m telling you, this is a die you are going to want! It even comes with 3 different sized leaves. I have a tutorial below, but read the whole thing first! I tell you a couple of things that I would improve and do different the next time I make one of these.

Here are the supplies I used:

•McGill Paper Blossoms Tool Set
•Foam Pad to shape the flower on ( I folded a piece of kid craft foam in half. Worked just fine)
•Spellbinders Rose Creation Die Set
•Big Shot or other die cutting machine that works with Spellbinders wafer-thin dies.
•Patterned Paper (mine was from a Recollections Paper Pad)
•Distress Inks (one in a color to match the flower part and another to match the leaves)
•Cosmetic Sponge or Ink Blending Tool
•Paper Piercer ( You will need this to pop the pieces out of the dies and poke the little hole out of the middle when it is stuck in the die)
•Glossy Accents (or other quick drying clear glue)
•Non-Stick Craft Mat (or work on a space you don’t mind getting inky)
•Metal Brad and Alcohol Ink (Or a brad that you like and don’t need to color with Alcohol Inks)

Ok! That looks like a ton of supplies, but hopefully you already have a lot of that stuff.

Wait…where did those come from?! LOL. I walked in my craft room the other day and found these beautiful flowers and two bags of my favorite chocolate truffles. He gave them to me for no reason! I couldn’t believe it and I was so blown away. It made me feel so special. I had to share!

Ok back to the project haha!

Here are some of the supplies I started with. I ended up only die cutting less than half of this paper out. Running that die through the machine time and time again gets a little boring. Besides, I started to get a neck ache! You actually just need to run the full set through once to be able to make a flower. I just kept running it through with different colors since I plan to make a ton of these to put on Mother’s Day Cards.

I cut down the papers and ran them through the Big Shot.

Here are the piles I ended up with when I was done with all the cutting. I haven’t tried the vellum yet, but I definitely plan to! After I die cut all of these out I inked up the edges with a distress ink that closely matched the color using half of a cosmetic sponge. I did that to the leaves too. The next step was forming.

This is the part that would probably be easier to follow on a video. There actually is a video by McGill on YouTube showing how to make the paper flowers using their punches. I used a few of the techniques I learned from the video, but I had to modify them to use my dies instead. Basically what I am showing here is that I took the tip and swirled it around in a circle around the hole in the middle. I also swirled it around in circles on each petal. This apparently breaks up the fibers, but it also makes it start to shape and lift.

I repeated this with each size flower and slowly moved down the size of the ball point from 8mm to 6mm to 5mm to 3mm as I was getting to the smaller flowers. The picture below shows what it looks like at this point.

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If you like this look , you can actually just stop here and put a brad through it. If I was to stop here and use the flower just like this I would, however, add another one of the largest flower layers and curl up a small one for the middle. I would also still add the leaves to it. If you want it to be even more dimensional, you can add glue to the bases of each part and glue them together. That will force them to be tighter and more 3D. Donna Salazar shows that in her video about this die set.

The next step involves taking the tweezers out of the tool set and putting it through the hole to clamp on to the middle of each petal. You then take your thumb and forefinger and form the petal around the tweezers. Do this to each and every petal if you want to get this different look I will show in the end. You also take the tweezers and bend each side of the petal down. This part is really easy and doesn’t take that long.

This picture shows what the flower looked like after I completed the bending. The leaves were done the same way I did the petals. I first swirled around on them with the 8mm ball point then I bent the ends. One the leaves I also took a very small pointed tool and made a line down the middle. I am not sure if you can really see that though.

Next, I just put a little Glossy Accents on the bottoms of each flower piece and stacked them up. Pretty Simple. You could use hot glue for this part instead if you want.

Here is what it looked like after gluing was done.

I decided that I didn’t like how wide the opening was so I used another one of the smallest flowers. The paper I used was not double-sided so I had to use a mixture of my pigment inks and distress inks to try imitating the patterned paper. When I make these again I will either make sure I can imitate the paper well or just use double-sided paper. I overlapped and glued the petals together to get a tight bud for the middle. I did not glue the last petal to the first just because I wanted it to look like that. It is up to you how you decide to glue it together though. I glued the small bud to the middle of the flower using Glossy Accents again.

I wanted my middle metal brad to kind of match the flower so I took a silver brad and dyed it with Adirondack Alcohol Inks. It didn’t take too long to dry. Be careful though because I didn’t realize that I should have dabbed out the ink stuck under the bottom of the top part of the brad. There was some in there and it got on my flower as I was lowering it in. Oops!

Finished!

All the pictures just above are of the finished flower . Hopefully you were able to follow my odd instructions. If you need or want a video, just let me know! I wasn’t comfortable with doing a video the first time since I didn’t know at all what I was doing, but now I think I could do it.

Next time I make these flowers I will use more layers like 2-3 of some of the same sizes for more fullness. I will also probably use double-sided paper.

Ahh! I’m freaking out! Did I REALLY just buy that!? YES I did! I have a mix of emotions going through my head right now. Excited- Scared- Thrilled-Anxious.

This is absolutely the most I have ever spent on a single craft item. I used to think the people who were paying for Cricut machines had to be out of their minds (no offense, I didn’t have the craft addiction I do now back then). Now here I am paying for a Sizzix eClips Machine and ECAL!

Here is the run down on my logic for purchasing this electronic die cutting master:

Other very important supporting factors:
• Cuts through multiple different types of materials including lightweight Chipboard (yay!)
• Replacement parts cost seems pretty low
• Doesn’t seem to have any bugs (WTG Sizzix on waiting to release until bugs were worked out!)
• With the use of ECAL I will save a ton of money not having to buy separate cartridges.
• Built in Laser allows you to line up paper perfectly to avoid waste.

My current die cutting machines and thoughts on them:

• Slice Hands-Free
My Slice machine and I have a Love-Hate relationship every time I use it. I love it when it works, but other times it randomly decides to spaz out and either not turn on, won’t move or go back to “home” position, shred up my paper, or drags the blade all over the paper ruining the cuts. It can work like a dream and be a mischief within the same session of use. I just don’t get it. I have tried so many different things to fix it, but when it comes down to it, it just works when it wants and doesn’t other times. I think the embossing and debossing feature on it is a joke too. It’s a nice little machine for small projects under a meager 4 inches. I bought quite a few cartridges for my Slice machine. I do think they were fairly priced, but I bought almost all of my cartridges on sale. I know they have come out with a new “Slice Elite” that fixed a couple of the issues (you don’t have to change the pressure, can cut thicker materials, it’s faster, etc), but I’m not that confident in the Slice to give the Elite a try.

• Sizzix Big Shot
I still totally love my Big Shot! It’s great. You can use so many different manufacturers dies and I think that is a great feature. The biggest problem that I have had lately is that I can not put any dies wider than about 5.5-6″ through it. I considered getting a Big Shot Pro, but the reviews on it were bad to say the least. Not being able to make chipboard albums, cut full-sized cards or envelopes, or any of the other larger items needed for mixed-media projects is what left me yearning for something more.

Well, I’m sure a lot of you would agree with my reasons for getting the eClips machine. I really hope it is as awesome as I am thinking it will be! It should be here in 1-5 days. I think I am going to make my un-boxing of the eClips Machine be my youtube debut haha. I bought a tri-pod and everything, but haven’t posted a video yet. So excited!

If you have an eClips and have any awesome tips for me, please share in the comments! Is there something you hate about your current die cutting machine? Let it all out in the comments! Thanks for stopping by!

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